Pumpkin soup
by bhut
Summary: Caroline and Abby play Esau and Jacob over Connor


**Pumpkin soup**

_Disclaimer: None of the characters are mine, but belong to Impossible Pictures._

Caroline Steele was angry and frustrated with herself: this job of hers with Oliver Leek had backfired rather spectacularly, leaving her alone and emptied on the periphery of life – something that she had never enjoyed throughout her life.

Caroline's life, as a matter of fact, had been a see-saw of exciting and boring, at least in her point of view. Get adopted by a childless couple who also wanted to score social points by adopting an African baby – exciting (well, supposedly 'cause Caroline had been really too young to decide one way or another back), grow up into young adulthood with a firm knowledge that she would grow up to be a psychologist – boring, realize that psychology in particular and knowledge of human psyche is _not_ for her and become a dog trainer instead with connections in military - exciting, joining Leek's outfit over some rather transparent pretence of being a good British citizen – undecided here actually, get almost eaten by a bunch of prehistoric monsters and get dumped by her very first actual boyfriend – that was something else. Throughout her life, regardless of whether it was in an exciting or a boring stage, Caroline never had any luck with boyfriends – her parents were just too formidable to make Caroline even think of bringing any of her potential dates home for dinner... but Connor was somehow different. He was intelligent, and kind of funny, and getting dumped by him hurt. Caroline had been as much of a victim by Leek as anyone else on that September day, so why did he choose the blonde sex-dolly over her-

"Hey, watch where you're going... hey, it's you?!"

***

Abby Maitland was in a bad mood. First of all, it was February, and February in London meant smog, fog and sleet on the streets, as well as that sort of a low temperature that made people feel too hot in winter clothing, and too cold in clothing for spring.

Secondly, earlier today a time anomaly had opened up in the suburbs, and a juvenile T-Rex had stumbled through, too starving to last long in the current weather, but also too hungry and stupid to care about that – all that the smallish dinosaur cared about was getting food. As a consequence, the ARC team got involved in a lively debate about what to do with it. The young dinosaur had blithely ignored the discomfort of the cold weather and went trampling through the snow, leaving mangled and mostly eaten bodies of several people and their pets in its wake. Its own gaunt appearance and uneven pace indicated, that soon enough it would be down for the count as well – so what was to do with it? Normally, releasing the prehistoric animals back through the time anomalies was the norm, but in this case on the other side of the time anomaly laid a world devastated by the K/T mass extinction, so releasing the dinosaur back there would effectively kill it as well.

Eventually, though, all of these debates came to naught, as the T-Rex saw and smelt the ARC field team and charged at them, fully determined to eat them instead. This resulted in a short, but busy interaction of humans and dinosaur that ended with the T-Rex killed by the Special Forces soldiers as it tried to get out of a half-frozen pond. Nick Cutter would've been aghast by this result, but Nick received a concussion earlier, when the T-Rex's tail had swatted him in the head, so he was in no position to argue, but was, in fact, unconscious. This left Jenny dragging Nick to the ARC's hospital wing alongside with the several of Special Forces men, who got killed or badly mauled by the T-Rex's snapping jaws and swapping tail in the process, Connor extracting the dinosaur's corpse from the smallish, but half-frozen, pond, and Abby going to home to cook him – and herself – a hot meal out of... well, Abby didn't know out of what exactly, but she suspected that it would be something along the lines of a TV dinner instead.

Suddenly, another cart rammed into hers.

"Hey, watch where you're going... hey, it's you?!" Abby exclaimed, half-surprised and half-angered when she saw the woman on the other hand. "Caroline, right? What are you doing here?"

"Buying vegetables for soup and such," Caroline replied coldly.

"This is a row of squash and the like," Abby disdainfully looked sideways at the taller woman. "Don't tell me you can make a meal from the something like that," she indicated a smallish pumpkin, left over from a Halloween or Samhain celebration. "Come on, I dare you!"

Abby wasn't entirely sure why she added the last bit. The most likely explanation was that she had had a bad day and searched for an outlet for her bad mood – and Connor's ex-girlfriend seemed a perfect target.

"Excuse me?" Caroline carefully asked. "What did you say?"

"I dare you to make something out of a pumpkin," Abby glared at her. "Come on – it's not like you have anything better to do!" she was being rude, and what's worse – deliberately rude, but after a close scrape with a starving T-Rex, juvenile or not, Abby felt that she could allow herself some rudeness after all.

Caroline stared down at the shorter woman, her face unreadable. "Oh, is that a challenge?" she finally spoke, as gears turned on in her brain, and a kernel of a plan began to form in her head. "Hmm, you blonde?"

Abby paused, as her own mental processes began to scramble frantically. It was well over six months since she and others saw Caroline at Stephen's funeral and frankly, it could just as well continue to go in the same direction: Abby never liked the other woman – period.

On the other hand, though, backing down after standing up would be just like the rest of the day, when she had been tramping through the sludge for hours, saw bloody victims and survivors of a T-Rex attack, and had jumped into a semi-melted snow-pile to escape a charge of the aforementioned T-Rex. All of this amounted to her being in a bad mood, and the idea that she would now back down from Caroline Steele of all people just didn't sit well in her stomach.

"Yes, it is," Abby finally spoke after a brief internal struggle. "I dare you to make a meal from the pumpkins over here – a _really good_ meal. And if you manage to do it, I'll agree to anything that you propose next."

"All right then," Caroline said calmly. "You're on. Just give me an hour or so to get everything in order, and I will make you your meal!"

* * *

Caroline was at Abby and Connor's flat in under an hour, loaded with several bags of food and cooking utensils, and, of course, a pair of pumpkins. Abby, who half-expected never to see Caroline again (or at least for another six months or so) was surprised nonetheless.

"What's all that?" she asked, suspecting – in a sinking feeling – that Caroline was going to meet her impromptu dare face-on. "I thought we were talking about pumpkins-?"

"And so we were, but no man – or woman, for that matter – can be sated with pumpkin alone. But don't worry. The really good meal of yours will be made from pumpkins, after all."

"I can hardly wait," Abby nervously said.

But all the same, she did.

* * *

Pumpkin soup was the first course. It was thick, and yellow, and garnished with fresh parsley of all things. "Enjoy!" Caroline brightly said as she thrust a plate towards Abby, whose nervousness and anticipation had grown proportionally with an increase of tasty smells emanating from her smallish kitchenette. "Mom usually adds ginger in such weather, but I figured that the peppercorns would be enough."

"Peppercorns?" Abby gulped and swallowed her first spoonful. Immediately, a wave of fire swept from her mouth downwards, down to the tips of her toes, which Abby was sure would never feel warm in such a February. "Hey! This is really good!"

"I know," Caroline nodded in agreement and began to eat her own soup.

* * *

For the second course, it was more pumpkin, of course, this time stewed into an almost porridge-like consistency and served with butter on top of it. Honestly, Abby was no longer as hungry as before the soup, but neither she was all that nervous. After all, it was pumpkin stewed in with salt water – how good could it be?

Surprisingly good, actually, and quite filling too. Before very long, Abby was filling stuffed to the gills, metaphorically speaking, and Caroline, still smiling slightly, brought out deserve as the finishing blow – some sort of an apple-pumpkin pudding that Abby only had a little room left, but her inner stubbornness would not allow to let go – and it was then that Connor arrived.

"What a day!" the young man groaned as he took off his winter clothing. "Between Jenny's histrionics about Nick, the ARC's doctors making noises about the T-Rex-inflicted wounds and James, well, being himself, unfortunately, my afternoon was shot, so how's yours-" he trailed away, as he saw that Abby was firstly not quite alone, and secondly not quite paying attention to him (though she tended to do the latter often enough when they really were alone).

"Hey, Connor," Abby said sleepily, her breath a mixture of pumpkin, apple and peppercorn (and some other things, but Connor could only distinguish these three), "me and Caroline had a bet, and she, hic, won. She gets a free wish. I'm off to sleep all of this pumpkin off-" and she wobbled away of to her bedroom.

"What's going on around here?" Connor exclaimed, but not too loudly, for he didn't want to wake up Abby.

"I believe," Caroline said innocently, "that Abby over there had summarized it all very neatly: she dared me to make a really good dinner out of pumpkins in exchange for a free wish. And that is what I exactly did, too – a really good dinner, that is!"

"Aha," Connor sceptically said, "and your free wish?"

"Mmm... maybe we can go and see a movie or something?" Caroline said quietly, looking shyly away.

Connor hesitated, thinking slowly. When he last saw Caroline, at Stephen's funeral, he wanted to have nothing with her, or anyone – or anything – else that reminded him of Oliver Leek, but that was at least six months ago and since then, well, things have changed – apparently to the point where Abby thought that it was okay for her to leave him one-on-one with an ex-girlfriend – his first ex-girlfriend, who, on their dates, somehow made him feel manly, something that he didn't usually feel around Stephen, or Nick, or even Abby with her kung-fu fighting or whatever. Well, he'll show her!..

"Sure," he finally said, "why not? Abby needs to sleep off all that food, I suppose."

"Great! Let me get my coat, then!" Caroline chirped.

* * *

"...and while that, kids, was not quite enough to get your dad to marry me straight away," Mrs. Temple would be telling her children several years later, "it was enough to get me a chance, and the rest, well, while it isn't exactly history, it will be told at another time."

End.


End file.
